Vous faite partie de moi
by RaspBerryStars
Summary: After the war, they all become much more intimate - post-war friendship fic.


**Title:** Vous faite partie de moi  
**Author:** quick_ly  
**Fandom:** _Harry Potter_  
**Pairing:** Gen, Ron/Hermione, Neville/Luna, mentions of other canon pairings  
**Word Count:** 5,747  
**Rating:** PG-13 / light R  
**Summary:** After the war, they all become much more intimate.  
**Warning:** Spoilers for entire series. Do spoilers for _Casablanca_ count? Well, spoilers for _Casablanca_.  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_.  
**A/N:** That time I wrote really weird _Harry Potter_ post-war fic. This started out after reading a really amazing Kristen Wiig/Bill Hader fic and just kept growing. Title is taken from Josephine Baker's version of "I've Got You Under My Skin", and a major thanks must go to ceridweyn_lin for being such a lovely beta. Fair warning though: I haven't written Potter fic in years, and can't say this is the most in-character thing on the planet. (I could be wrong – there were no complaints from my beta – but I feel the need to just give readers a head's up.)

**.**

After the war, they all become much more intimate.

Not sexually – though all their virginities will be lost within the year – but strictly as friends. It's like a wall has been broken down, stuff shifting. Suddenly, things that would have been weird or awkward in the past… aren't. Sleeping on each other's limbs, reading one and other's minds, responding to questions with "ugh" or "bleh" and knowing with the utmost certainty that this will be able to carry the conversation; Hermione had always thought of them as close friends, even like family, but this is just simply so much more. In the spam of less than a year, they go from being solid individuals (Hermione) to one big blob of a thing (), not so much a person as a collective series of people, all intertwined. Ron sometimes liked to describe it as being a giant married couple (prompting Harry to question if this would be like a sister wives/brother husband thing and Ginny to reassure that it most certainly would), but Hermione thought they cared too much to be married, or rather, they all knew each other so well that there was no need to show that they care (which, when Hermione things about it, what a cynical way to look at things, right? But it actually makes perfect sense. Like, they care so much that there's no need to say _I care_, which probably just comes across as lazy, but it's not. Or it's not entirely.) It's the same thing with lying; the war took all the energy they had to lie away, so now they don't even bother.

Admittedly, she would have expected it from her, Ron and Harry; they spent the better part of a year huddled up in a tent together, any needs to try and impress the others flying away with the first protective charm. In retrospect, this level of friendship was pretty inevitable for them.

But the others just sort of… fade in. Part of it's because they all move into Grimmauld Place together, but really, the _becoming bonded forever and ever_ process started earlier in the summer, while everyone was still huddled up in the Burrow, trying to pretend that this was just quality time as friends and not the depressing recovery from a war. Since they were all pretty much living there (sans Luna, who still lived just up the road, and Neville, whose house had been destroyed by Death Eaters and was staying with Luna and her father, along with his grandmother), spending time together and moping about the house became their favorite past-time, and when it was time to find a home of their own, it was really just a given: _the young people will move in together._

It's really weird to think of it like that, though, that at the time moving in together was just a _let's do this_ kind of thing, that it just as easily could have not turned out the way it did. What if Neville hadn't been staying with Luna and George couldn't be convinced to move with them? Would the entire essence of the group be altered? Would they even _be_ a group? (It's also briefly occurs to her that it was just as possible that someone else, like Dean or Seamus, could have moved in and become part of their little family, which, _no_, she is not going to think about that. They are best friends and it only could have ever happened to them because of fate or destiny or whatever.

This is what these people have done to her.)

But anyway, the closeness, the _we are all the best of friends and everyone else can just suck it_ of it all just kind of gradually becomes a thing over time. Like, they don't start out with it in mind, and then it's there, then they're all suddenly super close and are suddenly exclusive in their closeness (like, Dean and Seamus and other people still come round and hang out, and everyone has fun, but it's not the same.) It's as though they all just wake up one day and suddenly know everything about each other and can read each other's mind's, etc., only it's not because it's so gradual that they don't notice the change until it's over, and then it's impossible to imagine life without it. Which… doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, in retrospect.

How about this for an example:

Ron and Harry develop this thing where they'll correct each other on anything that's not completely factual, like interrupt wherever the conversation is going to say "you wrong." And than the other one will get annoyed at being cut off and they'll both go into these long rants about what is and isn't considered proper conversational manners. And it's weird, because Hermione thinks that if anyone from the outside (anyone who didn't know them like the group does) heard what they were doing, they'd think Ron and Harry really didn't like each other or that they were grumpy people or whatever; they wouldn't get that entire thing is just them being prats, that it goes back to a joke from _years ago_…

Does that explain it better? Because it can kind of serve as an example for their entire group relationship (along with Ginny and Luna's made-up rules about being younger than everyone and Hermione and Neville's weird physical tackling fights and a whole lot of other shit that she's not even going to bother to point out because no one else would get it anyway): no body else on the planet gets what they have, but it doesn't matter because _they_ do, so the other people can just go shove it.

Get it?

**.**

Ron and Hermione are the first to have sex.

(Okay, technically, this point goes to George, who lost his virginity in his seventh year, but it was before their giant friendship was a thing and it was with some girl whom they don't know – or rather, he refuses to tell them – so in the context of the story, it's Ron and Hermione that go first.)

It happen just hours after Voldemort is defeated, when everyone is just beginning to celebrate/mourn (it's an odd mixture of both – most people have lost someone, and those who have not are doing their best to be considerate, but there's still this over-powering feeling of triumph going around and it seems to be confusing everyone on what the appropriate attitude should be).

Hermione finds him up in the boy's dormitories, sitting on his bed (it briefly occurs to her that it's technically not his bed anymore, and she wonders if he's thinking the same thing. Probably.)

"Everyone's wondering where you are," she says from the doorway, a faint, forced smile on her lips; she feels like she's intruding on a private moment, because well, she is (over the years Hermione's gathered that when you find someone hiding away in their old school dormitory after the death of a sibling, it's a private moment), but she also feels like she should be the one to comfort him. Well, she's here at least, and kind of his girlfriend and… what is she supposed to do, leave? (It's so weird to look back on this moment, now that they've become even closer than they were before, because now she'd know exactly what to do and how to act, and there would be no question at all about whether she was doing the right thing. It's weirder to think that even after knowing each other seven years and going through a war together, they still didn't know each other half as well as they do now.)

She goes and sits next to him on the bed and tries to think of something meaningful to say; this sort of stuff, comforting, has never been that hard for her, but with Ron it's different, she can't make herself look at this through an outside perspective. She cares too much, about Ron and about the Weasley's and about Fred, who she loved like a brother and who she is honestly really going to miss. And she knows this isn't really her pain, it's Ron's time to be sad, but also can't make herself up to be consoling or positive or whatever it is he needs right now.

"You don't have to try and make me feel better," he suddenly says, like he's reading her mind, and she only now notices that he hasn't spoken a word since she entered the room.

"I don't think I could if I tried," she whispers sadly, but when she turns her face to him, he's smiling "What?"

He starts chuckles a little. "You haven't read a book yet on comforting the uncomfortable?" He's really starting to giggle now, and it only takes a second for Hermione to get the joke.

"You know," she starts, "I have actually read that book."

They both burst out laughing.

And okay, it was a pretty bad joke, like super bad, but a kind of uncontrollable smile is still spreading on her lips, because it's just too absorbed; they're sitting there on his old school bed, which probably isn't even his anymore, mourning the loss of his older brother, and he makes a joke. A joke about her relationship with books, a topic of which they haven't breached for some time, since before the war had really broken out and it was somewhat acceptable for Ron and Harry to poke fun at her for being a book-worm. They don't do this anymore, since her vast array of knowledge has helped keep them alive over the last year, but for just a second, they're back before any of that mattered, and Ron's back to being the idiot kid that made fun of her for being smart.

It's comforting.

But a second later the laughing dies down, and they're left with this really awkward silence where, she guesses, all their feelings are supposed to go. Because this is like a crossroads (in retrospect it most certainly is a crossroads); he's lost his brother but they're also finally in the open about what they want to be to each other, and she just has this feeling in the pit of her stomach that she needs to treat this differently than she would for anyone else.

"I just," he starts, finally turning his head towards her, "don't know how I'm supposed to feel."

"Me neither."

And than, kind of out of nowhere but really not at all, he kisses her. Or rather, he leans in for a kiss and she leans forward, so it could be argued that they kissed each other. Either way, the point it, they suddenly put their mouths on each others mouths, and it's like she has some kind of idea how he's feeling, how they're both feeling. He's sad, but he also doesn't want to think about it, because he's probably going to be thinking about it for the rest of his life, and he wants to be with something familiar but also not, like anything too familiar will just make him think of Fred. Hermione's familiar, but now there's this whole other side to their relationship to explore, newer and exciting (or it is for her, and since he leaned in first, she's just going to assume that he's on the same wavelength.)

He pulls away after a second, quite plainly asking with his eyes _is this okay? Can I do this now?_ and she just kind of smiles and leans back in, letting her tongue slide into her mouth.

Hermione knows from this moment that they're about to have sex.

The truth of the matter is, after all the years of tension and waiting and whatever, they really can't not have sex. Because it's all been leading up to this, and it's like, once you light the fire, you just can't put it out (overtime, Hermione will become quite relieved that they didn't kiss until their seventh year, because _oh god_, what kind of teenagers would they had been if the first kiss had been in fourth of fifth year?) They don't even have the awkward _should we have sex_ question; he just lays her on the bed as they start maneuvering their clothes, and fifthteen minutes later they go down to find Harry, their hands happily entwined.

And that's that.

(That's actually not just that at all, because from then on (or from when everyone learns that they've had sex), they become like the sex experts of the house and everyone goes to them for advice whether they like it or not (Ron really doesn't like it when Harry tries to get advice on having sex with Ginny), and so they get to have lovely conversations like this:

"Hermione, I want to talk to you about sex."

"But Ginny, this would mean talking about the possibility of you and Harry having sex, and Harry's like my brother, and you're like my sister. Think of how incestuous this would be for my brain."

"Hermione, you're like a sister to me, and you are literally fucking my _actual_brother. I think I win in the weird incestuous brain farts.")

**.**

The summer of 2002 is painfully hot.

The ministry workers who normally run the weather are on strike, and most days are in the lows of 105 degrees. Almost everyone tries to do all their work from home, which quickly becomes stuffy and crowded. Most days are just like a big sweaty blob of togetherness (and the word togetherness is being used quite literally here, because it seemed like no matter what they were working on, they were always hanging out, whether or not they liked it), and it's since been dubbed by Ginny "that time everything was smelly and nothing changed."

It's also the summer that Luna and Neville start fucking.

_Start_ might not be the correct term, since it's more than likely that they'd had sex before this – that first year at Grimmauld Place was a pretty crazy time, and most of them were coupled up with someone and were having a lot of sex (Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermione, and George and Angelina), and Luna hadn't met Rolf and Neville hadn't started dating Hannah, so the rest of them have guessed that something must have happened between Neville and Luna, but it's in the summer of 2002 when things start to become obvious, so it's generally considered to be when things started up.

So yeah, this is when they start fucking. In the summer of 2002.

(And, in case anyone is wondering – yes, Neville has started dating Hannah, as has Luna with Rolf. That should give the world a better idea about what this whole fucking situation means.)

**.**

"_Ugh_, Hermione. Do we have too?"

It's Saturday night sometime early in July, and Hermione is continuing her summer mission of Educating Ron and Co. On Important Films in Cinema History. (She's not why Ron gets his name in there and everyone else is just _Co._ Probably because she's sleeping with him and his intelligence in the vain of movies is far more important to her.)

It hasn't been going too great so far. Here's a list of all the films and his correlating rating:

_Anne Hall_ **C+**

_E.T._ **A**

_To Kill a Mockingbird_ **C-**

_Chinatown_ **B**

_Star Wars_ **A+** ("Can we watch it again?")

_Jaws_ **A**

_The Sound of Music_ **C**

_Sophie's Choice_ **D**

_Bringing Up Baby_ **D**

_The Wizard of Oz_ **D+** ("What the bloody hell was that?")

_Schindler's List_ **C-**

_It's a Wonderful Life_ **C+**

_Singin' in the Rain_ **C+**

_The Godfather_ **B-**

_Gone with the Wind_ **D-**

(It's been a busy summer. They haven't gotten a ton of work done.)

"Hermione, that last movie was a bloody piece of garbage. What the hell does it mean, _gone with the wind_?"

"I don't know, Ron," she says in a calming voice, bringing over some popcorn, "but you'll love this movie. It's called _The Big Lebowski_."

"What the hell does _that_ mean?" Ron whispers to her as the opening credits come up.

"Oh, just watch the movie."

_12 minutes later…_

"Hermione, can I ask a question?"

"Ron, the movie's just started. What the bloody hell could you be wondering now?"

"It's nothing to do with the movie." His voice is kind of shallow, like he's not sure he should be bringing attention to whatever it is he's about to say. "It's just… aren't Luna and Neville supposed to be watching this with us."

Which… that's actually a pretty good point. When Hermione had mentioned watching _The Big Lebowski_, Neville had piped up and enthusiastically said "Count me in," and then Luna had nodded along, and when Hermione had called them down some twenty minutes ago, Neville had shouted "give us a second," in a really load exasperated voice.

But it's all mute, because a couple seconds later Luna and Neville stride into the room, walking awkwardly next to each other and both looking a little disheveled.

"What have you guys been doing?"

"Oh," Neville says, bring a hand to his hair and sitting as far away from Luna as possible. "We were just working." And Luna nods like it's important that she verify what he's said, and brings a hand to her ponytail, trying and apparently failing to smooth it out.

But Hermione knows that ponytail. It's what you do when you've just had sex and your hair is a mess, and you want to make it seem like that was totally what you were going for so you put your hair up into a messy ponytail, and then it looks all cool and mess up and _I just rolled out of bed with awesome messy hair. Deal with it._ And in retrospect this exercise would actually work better for Luna since her hair always looks kind of messed up and so no one would think that she had just had sex no matter what.

Except that Hermione knows that ponytail and she knows Luna and Neville and she knows that when they come down stairs fifthteen minutes into the movie and say that they've been _working_ it in fact means that they've been having sex or something in the vain of that.

"How much have we missed?" Luna asks now, taking a handful of popcorn.

**.**

So Luna and Neville having sex kind of becomes a thing after that.

They hang out in his room or they hang out in her room, and the door(s) are always shut and they're always late for mealtimes, and when asked what they've been doing the answer is always something along the lines of _stuff_ which quickly becomes code for _sexy stuff that we're not going to tell you about._

Yeah, real detail. These people.

And it's weird, because everyone kind of always wanted Luna and Neville to get together. They would make jokes about it and sometimes pay extra attention when words like "date" and "shag" came out of one of their mouths. There might even have been a pool going on how long it would take them to shag (Hermione's now owns George quite a large sum of money), so this new romance thing is oddly very validating to all of them.

But then Hannah and Rolf will still sometimes show up at the house, and neither Neville nor Luna will show any indication that there are plan to terminate those relationships, and whenever asked about said people they'll say (in pretty fucking genuine voices) "things are going great", and everyone else will just be left to wonder what the hell is going on.

To their credit, they do at least kind of attempt to keep it a secret; it's not they just prance around the house or anything, constantly making out and making everyone else go _boo_ (this is what all the other couples in the house do, so it's not that far fetched a concept.) They always keep it to one of their respective rooms, and make up a lovely slew of excuses all too why they've been spending so much time together. (Hermione's current favorite: "Luna's just been teaching me how to make Nargle Pie.")

But they also don't treat the secret keeping like it's the biggest thing in the world, and pretty soon it becomes like an unspoken rule that they don't talk about That Thing They're Doing, kind of like how you don't mention Fred and Angelina's romance in front of George, etc, etc.

"We have to talk to him about this," Hermione openly decides while she and Ron are out shopping for Harry's birthday gift.

Ron, who is debating between two different broom-care kits, sniffs. "Why do we have to be the ones to talk to him?"

"Because no one else wants to, and we can't just let this go on."

Ron starts examining one of the kits. "Why?"

Hermione hits him upside the head, nearly knocking the kit out of his hands. "Ronald! They're our friends, and they're _cheating_. We can't let them do this."

"Well, yeah," he shrugs, rubbing the spot where she hit him, "but they're also adults, and it's not like we can tell them what do to. I mean, they've started, which kind of means the decision about whether to cheat or not has already been made, doesn't it?"

Hermione scowls at him for a setting, than huffs. "Well, we can try. I don't want them to think that we're okay with this or anything."

"Why would they ever think we'd be okay with it?"

"Because we haven't bloody talked to them about it, that's why!" She kind of shouts that last bit, and a couple people stare. Ron however sighs, defeated.

"Fine," he says, finally deciding on a kit and heading for the check-out. "We'll talk to them."

**.**

They come home to find Neville sitting alone on the floor in front of the TV, nursing a firewisky.

Hermione gives Ron this kind of look, trying to convey that _this is the moment_ with her eyes. Apparently it works, because Ron sighs and shouts "oi, Longbottom, we need to have a little chat."

Neville throws his head against one of the couch cushions, giving off an exasperated _ugh_, and Hermione can tell that he's been expecting and dreading this, the conversation they have about how he's been cheating on his girlfriend.

"What would you guys like to chat about," he asks through what Hermione can only assume are gritted teeth.

"Oh, don't play dumb Neville," Hermione says, grabbing her and Ron a couple bottles. The original plan had been to take things slow and ask important questions, but if Neville is going to be a baby about the whole thing, then she has no reason to be mature either. "You know very well what it is we want to talk about."

"Well then maybe you should wait until Luna gets here, make the whole thing go by a lot quicker. That way you'll only have to do this once."

"Don't be a prat, Neville," Ron retorts, taking the bottle from Hermione and maneuvering himself so that she can comfortably sit next to him on the floor. "Not about this."

Neville just looks down, a cloud of shame on his face, and takes another sip. "So," he starts, "what would you like to know?"

Hermione and Ron just sort of stay quiet for a moment, moving themselves around (her feet are now in his lap), and taking large gulps of their drinks. Then Ron asks, "Well, for starters, how long has it been going on, you and Luna?"

"I dunno, since sometime last year."

"And you guys didn't ever, you know," Hermione says, sitting up a bit. "Hook up at all? Before last year, I mean."

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it does Neville!" she says a little too loudly. "Why would you think it wouldn't?"

"Oh _come o_n. Can we be serious here? Did anything we did in those first couple years _really_ matter? We were what, nineteen, and a war had just ended and we were fucking living here without any real adults, trying to figure out how to live in a world that wasn't constantly threatened by an evil psycho." Neville lets out a long breath, finishing off what appears to be the last of his firewisky. He immediately reaches for his wand and shouts (a little louder than necessary) _accio firewisky_. It zooms right into his hand. "The stuff we did in that first year didn't count."

Hermione doesn't really want to accept that as his final answer, but he seems put off enough as it is, so she instead says, "Okay, then. Well, why did you guys start up? Last year."

He kind of grumbles a little bit, and slides further down the side of the couch. "I don't remember exactly. You guys weren't home and we were and stuff just happened."

"What kind of stuff?"

"I don't know!" he almost shouts, looking extremely frustrated. "I don't even know why we're having this conversation."

"Because your cheating on your bloody girlfriend, is why," Ron says, the anger beginning to show quite clearly in his voice. "I mean, seriously Neville, what the bloody fuck are you doing?"

"You guys just don't get it. Our friendship destroys _everything_" Neville says in the cushion, and Hermione has to resist the urge to mock him for acting like an angsty teenager.

Ron beats her to the punch.

"What? Just because we're all best friends it means we can't ever have healthy romantic relationships?" He throws his hands up into the air in a very indigent kind of way, knocking something over with his arm. "That's bullshit, is what it is. What about Harry and Ginny, me and Hermione?"

"It was different for you guys, alright" Neville says, taking another sip of his firewisky. "You're whole relationship was a part of us, our group. You're romance was like part of our contract or something. And going out into the world and finding someone else, it's not the same. You can't ever find someone you can get this close to, you don't ever want to."

Hermione can tell that Ron is trying much too hard to resist mocking Neville for his sudden and out-of-character sense on self-reflection, so she says quickly, "George found Angelina."

"But Angelina was around at the start, and George wasn't ever… he was one of us, but he was also always going to grow up a little faster, just cause he was older and was in more of a state than we were. And Angie was a reminder of who he was, and who he was with Fred." He takes another sip, looking down ominously. "I don't have anything like that with Hannah."

"But you still love her?" Ron is now sitting in her lab, and she's began to run her fingers through his hair.

"Of course, but not in the way I love you guys."

The strange thing is, this is when she gets it. What they have, as a group, can't just be made with the correct formula – it takes time and work and pain, pain that nobody should ever have to live through, and everyone else – everyone who is not a part of their little group – has missed the mark. The relationships, the closeness, has already been formed. No late admissions.

It doesn't excuse what he's done (what he's doing), but it all starts to make a little more sense. She doesn't know what she would do if she was told to find somebody to make the center of her world. The spot's already taken.

**.**

After this, they all start to grow apart.

Not as friends – no, Hermione doesn't think they will ever stop knowing each other in the way they do – but this is when they start to build lives of their own, let themselves belong to other people. George and Angelina announce in May that they're expecting their first child, and a month later Neville finds a place with Hannah and Luna moves in with Rolf. (Nobody mentions the correlation in these events, or asks if they've stopped by now.)

Ron and Hermione are the last to leave, sticking around for another year, but it was always going to be that way.

They still call and owl each other all the time, and whenever one of them isn't feeling great, they just kind of show up at Grimmauld Place (they obviously visit each other's other homes as well, but Grimmauld Place remains the forefront for everything, and Harry and Ginny often come home to find somebody who isn't one of their children eating in their kitchen or sleeping on their couch, etc.) Once they all have kids, the top room on Weasley Wizard Wheezes (also known as George and Angelina's home) become a kind of daycare, and they basically all become like mini-parents to all the kids (Ginny comments that they've successfully become a cult.)

But they also have other responsibilities now, people they have to please. Spending hours on end watching old movies (because Hermione and Harry decided they needed a proper film education), eating junk food and avoiding work isn't really an option anymore. They're too high up in the system to slack off work anymore (Neville teaches at Hogwarts, for God's sake, and spends half of the year holed up in a _fucking castle_), and then there are all the kids and the time they require and all the love they need.

Basically, they don't have time to be one giant collective _thing_anymore. They have no choice but to develop lives of their own.

**.**

_Summer, 2012._

"The kids are spending the weekend at Bill and Fleur's–"

"Don't you mean _all_ our kids are spending the weekend at Bill and Fleur's?"

"Well, yeah, but that's not really the point, is it?"

"So why not mention it."

"Because–"

"Boys! Back to the point!"

"Right. Anyway."

They're all chatting in Ron and Hermione's kitchen. Or rather, Ron and Hermione are in their kitchen and Harry's head is sticking out of the fireplace.

"Anyway," he says again, exasperated, "me and Gin were just going to stay in and watch _Casablanca_, and we thought we'd see you the gang could come over."

"Harry, you know this is really short notice and–"

"What's _Casyblainco_?" Ron interrupts.

Both Harry and Hermione immediately turn their heads.

"What?"

"You've never seen _Casablanca_?"

"I've never seen _Casablanca_."

A beat goes by and then–

"I made you watch _Casablanca_," Hermione says surely.

"No, you did not."

"But… I had you watch everything. It was that summer, the really hot one where Neville and Luna were having sex all the time. I made you watch every classic movie I could think of."

"Except _Casablanca_, whatever it is."

Another beat.

Hermione turns back to Harry. "We'll be there."

**.**

Whenever they all get together they just sort of fall into the same pattern as before.

It doesn't happen often – they're hardly all ever in the same place at the same time, and when they are it's mostly at some sort of party, where special grown-up rules apply – but on these few and far occasions, those times in the summer when a spouse is away or the kids are at camp (or like this weekend, when Bill and Fleur have decided to turn Shell Cottage into a daycare), they all pretty easily revert back to younger versions of themselves. They'll tangle themselves up in each other's limbs and eat food of somebody else's plate and will be brutally honest to each other, knowing for sure that no one will mind, because this is just who they are, permanently intertwined.

These sides of them don't come out often, but they have too sometimes, or else they might let this part of themselves fade into their real lives, or worse, go away forever.

"We're like the ex you can't ever get over," Ron gives when Hermione brings this up, and everybody laughs pretty hard, (Neville and Luna albeit less so.)

But the thing is (and she will admit this, but not a lot more) – they do tend to idealize what they have just a little too much. They all like to pretend that what they have, this sort of impossibly close friendship is the most healthy and natural thing in the world. Which – okay, fine, it's really great to have people you love like this, to know that no matter what happens you're going to have these people to lean on. Hermione wouldn't trade this for the world.

But that doesn't mean she would wish it on someone else.

Because it's hard, hard being so close to a group of people. When you put so much love into one collective group of people, it's hard to become close to other people, form normal relationships. And sometimes it's too much. Sometimes you neglect your relationships with outsiders, sometimes you choose to let those people go. Sometimes you try to have both, and fail.

(Hermione thinks of Neville and Luna, standing side by side at the counter, and wonders what they'll be doing later tonight.)

But that's kind of a bummer to think about, that they're permanently going to be tied to each other no matter what happens and that they can never have super close relationship with other people, so Hermione thinks it's okay to idealize what they have. Not healthy (she's not that deluded), but okay, like this is just the way it is so there is no point getting all mopey about it.

**.**

_You have any idea what you'd have to look forward to if you stayed here?_

"How much longer is it?"

_Nine chances out of ten we'd both wind up at a concentration camp._

"Shut up Ron, we're almost done."

_You're saying this only to make me go._

"It's not that I don't like it–"

_I'm saying it because it's true._

"–but I've kind of got to go to the bathroom…"

_If that plain leaves the ground and you're not with him you'll regret it._

"Shut up!"

_Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon for the rest of your life._

"Bloody hell, you guys. It's just a movie."

_But what about us?_

"Shhh!"

_We'll always have Paris._

…

…

…

_Here's looking at you, kid._

…

"Wait – it's not over?"

_fin._


End file.
